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[casi] News, 16-23/7/03 (4)



News, 16-23/7/03 (4)

IMPERIAL POLITICS

*  Cost of occupation: £5m a day - human cost extra
*  Will the UN bail out Bush?
*  Greenstock Named Iraq Coalition Official
*  Don't sell out to Uncle Sam
*  Iraqi policy architect gains vindication

THE PHILOSOPHY OF WAR

*  Tony Blair's speech to the US Congress
*  At war for freedom


IMPERIAL POLITICS

http://www.guardian.co.uk/guardianpolitics/story/0,3605,999668,00.html

*  COST OF OCCUPATION: £5M A DAY - HUMAN COST EXTRA
by Richard Norton-Taylor and Larry Elliott
The Guardian, 17th July

The cost to British taxpayers of invading and occupying Iraq will be far in
excess of £5bn, with £1bn being spent even before the first shot was fired,
defence sources said yesterday.

This far exceeds the size of the special "war chest" which the Treasury has
offered.

With the government already budgeting for a £27bn deficit this year, some
estimates put the cost of maintaining 11,000 troops in Iraq and the Gulf
region at about £150m a month, or £5m a day.

That would put the postwar cost of keeping troops in the region for two
years - the absolute minimum according to defence thinking - at £3.6bn.

The total estimated prewar and postwar costs - £4.6bn - do not include the
expense of the fighting itself, defence sources admitted, and will put added
strain on the public finances in the run-up to the next election, when
Labour was hoping to use any spare cash to top up spending on schools and
hospitals.

Treasury sources hinted last night that they understood the financial
pressures on the MoD but confirmed that any spending on Iraq in excess of
the £3bn set aside by the chancellor, Gordon Brown, would have to come out
of the Treasury's reserve. This is a modest rainy day fund, worth £6bn over
the next three years, which allows the government to finance emergencies or
its priority areas without having to borrow more or raise taxes.

However, the latest figures from the MoD suggest that a prolonged commitment
in Iraq could be a drain on scarce resources at a time when the government
is under mounting pressure to prove that public services are improving.

Defence sources said the cost of the six-week war, including ammunition,
lost equipment, accidents and fuel, had yet to be calculated.

About £1bn was spent de ploying weapons systems and troops to Kuwait and
aircraft to the Gulf, and "desertifying" Challenger battle tanks before
operations had even started, a defence official said.

The Treasury puts the cost of keeping Britain's forces in postwar Iraq at a
slightly more conservative £120m a month - around half what the United
States is spending.

A Treasury spokesman said that the MoD was "some way away" from using up the
rest of the special reserve and that so far there had been no requests to
the Treasury for extra cash.

"If the MoD does come and ask for access to the reserve, we will consider
that at the time," he said. "But we are not in that territory yet."

The spokesman said that the extensive overseas commitments of the armed
forces in recent years meant that it was necessary for the MoD to receive
£3bn for the Iraq campaign, and that long-term peacekeeping and
reconstruction costs would feature in next year's comprehensive spending
review, covering government spending in the three years from 2005 6.

The defence secretary, Geoff Hoon, told MPs yesterday that the government
remained "committed to maintaining appropriate forces in Iraq for as long as
necessary and no longer".

Defence sources admitted that the presence of British troops in Iraq was
open-ended and they could be there at present levels in four years' time.

In addition, the MoD was allocated £300m for immediate humanitarian aid. The
Department for International Development has earmarked £270m in aid for
Iraq, including £60m provided by the Treasury.

Before the war, Keith Hartley, professor of economics at York University and
an expert in the cost of military operations, estimated that the cost to
British taxpayers of a war against Iraq would total at least £3.5bn, not
including occupying and stabilising Iraq after an invasion. "Occupation
could be for years," he added.

A senior military source who foresaw British forces in Iraq for a long time
told the Guardian: "Conflict is much cheaper than post-conflict."

Unless the Treasury agrees to pay for the extra costs of the Iraqi conflict,
the existing defence budget - already squeezed - will come under even more
pressure. The Treasury is already questioning large procurement projects,
including the Eurofighter, now called Typhoon, which was designed in the
1980s with dog fights against Soviet aircraft in mind.

The £19bn project has been dogged by budget overruns and delays. The first
RAF Typhoon squadron is unlikely to enter service until 2005, nine years
after the original deadline.

The MoD this week confirmed that the estimated cost of two aircraft carriers
planned for the Royal Navy had escalated from £2.8bn to £4bn. Under last
year's comprehensive spending review, Britain's defence budget will rise
from £29.3bn last year to £32.8bn in two years' time - an average annual
1.2% growth in real terms. It would be the biggest rise in military spending
since the cold war era 20 years ago.

With America's projected budget deficit revised up $150bn on Tuesday, war
costs have become an increasingly thorny issue in Washington.

So far, the military campaign in Iraq has cost $48bn, according to Dov
Zakheim, the Pentagon comptroller.

The latest Pentagon estimate is that military costs in both Afghanistan and
Iraq are running about $5bn a month. Yet budgets beyond this fiscal year do
not make any provision for keeping troops in the Gulf or Afghanistan.

Democrats yesterday attempted to make political capital out of the
ballooning costs, with Democrat senators calling on the Bush administration
to specify precisely the cost of continuing military operations in Iraq.


http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/EG19Ak02.html

*  WILL THE UN BAIL OUT BUSH?
by Jim Lobe
Asia Times, 19th July

WASHINGTON (Inter Press Service): Make no mistake: US President George W
Bush is in big trouble.

Whereas a week ago, Americans were talking about the dread "V" word - for
Vietnam - this week the dreaded "W" word - for Watergate - was back in
vogue, even as the "V" word was still in use. Watergate plus Vietnam is
about the worst combination for a sitting president that anyone could
possibly imagine.

And the almost daily announcement on the news that another US soldier has
been killed in an attack in Iraq, bringing to 32, 33, 34, the number of
troops killed since Bush declared an end to major hostilities in the war,
recalls nothing so much as the daily reminders on the evening news 23 years
ago that killed the presidency of Jimmy Carter: "Day 385 of the American
hostage crisis in Iran."

Short of a miracle - such as the discovery of a cache of weapons of mass
destruction in an Iraqi mountainside in circumstances that clearly indicate
that it was under Saddam Hussein's control as of March 18, 2003, or the
return of robust US economic growth that can quickly bring the unemployment
rate down to five percent - there is probably only one way that Bush can
save his presidency at this point.

But the cost in personal pride and policy will be extremely high.

To save his administration, Bush must now essentially abandon the aggressive
unilateralism that has dominated his foreign policy since even before
September 11, 2001; ask forgiveness from US allies who refused to join his
"coalition of the willing" in Iraq; and return to the United Nations
Security Council for a new resolution that will give the world body control
over the occupation.

As India - whose rejection of Bush's request for as many as 20,000 troops to
act as mercenaries for US foreign policy struck a devastating blow to the
imperial dreams of the Pentagon hawks - made clear this week, it, as well as
other nations, would be willing to provide peacekeepers and other kinds of
support to the Iraqi occupation only if the UN Security Council authorizes
it.

That is what US lawmakers - both Republicans and Democrats - want
desperately, as UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan found out during a brief
visit with many of them after a White House visit with Bush himself Monday.
That is also what the US foreign-policy establishment - whose cautions about
the rush to war were ignored or mocked by the neo conservatives and
rightwing hawks who hijacked foreign policy after September 11 - are calling
for. That is even what Bush's own economic and political advisers have begun
to whisper.

Their message: "The United States cannot by itself afford the burdens -
either economically or politically - of occupying Iraq. We need help, and
lots of it, even though we know that we will have to give up control to get
it. "

Even more, it is the message of what many here refer to as "the permanent
government"- the professionals and civil servants who staff the
national-security bureaucracies, in particular. They are clearly fed up with
the arrogance and hubris of the hawks centered in the offices of Defense
Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Vice President Dick Cheney who, in their view,
have driven the country into a quagmire.

Thus, CIA Director George Tenet, grilled by senators in a closed hearing
Wednesday, while taking full responsibility for the reference in Bush's
State of the Union speech to Saddam's alleged efforts to obtain uranium from
Africa, also deftly pointed his finger directly at hawks in the White House
and the Pentagon as the parties who pushed hard for its inclusion.

Thus, General John Abizaid, the new commander of allied forces in Iraq,
hand-picked by Rumsfeld, explicitly contradicted his boss in his first
appearance before Congress Wednesday when he said that US forces there are
facing a "classical guerrilla-type campaign" that is becoming more effective
and may be organized at the regional level.

Thus, officials at the State Department and the CIA are leaking damning
information about the hawks' efforts to silence, intimidate, and circumvent
analysts who disagreed with their cocksure predictions about how the Iraqis
would greet US forces as "liberators", how few troops would be needed for
the occupation, how easily the country could be transformed into a working
democracy; and how quickly the economy would be back on its feet and pumping
millions of barrels of oil.

Come September, these deep throats are likely to be singing publicly in
hearings on Capitol Hill, unless something changes radically.

Even if Bush and the hawks could stand up to them, however, there are also
the soldiers who are actually in Iraq and who are making no secret about how
angry they are. While radio talk show hosts debated whether the uranium
reference in Bush's speech was justified or not this week, the story that
carried the most wallop in Washington was the interviews on ABC's Good
Morning America with troops in Fallujah that aired Wednesday.

"If Donald Rumsfeld were here," said one, "I'd ask him for his resignation."
Another told a reporter that he had his own "Most Wanted" deck of cards.
"The aces in my deck are Paul Bremer, Donald Rumsfeld, George Bush and Paul
Wolfowitz." Meanwhile, career officers are telling reporters that the Iraq
deployment threatens to destroy the army's ability to recruit and retain its
troops.

This is poison for a president.

There are signs that Bush realizes this, particularly after meeting with
Annan. Before this week, Washington showed little interest in returning to
the UN for a new resolution. But that changed this week, as Secretary of
State Colin Powell began sounding out US allies - including German Foreign
Minister Joschka Fischer - about what kind of resolution could persuade
Berlin to help out.

Annan himself was encouraging. Diplomatic sources pointed to his statement
Wednesday in which, after noting the divisions that existed in the Security
Council before the war, he stressed that "Now that the war is over, we
should focus on stabilizing and building a peaceful and prosperous Iraq."

"It's getting more and more obvious that the [Security] Council's leverage
[vis-a-vis Washington] is increasing," said one source who noted the growing
sense in the US capital that the optimistic predictions of the hawks had put
the president in serious peril.

The question is, what will be the UN's price for bailing the administration
out, and will Bush be willing to pay it?


http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=535&ncid=535&e=6&u=/ap/20030
719/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq_british_diplomat_4

*  GREENSTOCK NAMED IRAQ COALITION OFFICIAL
by Dafna Linzer
Yahoo, 19th July

UNITED NATIONS (AP): Sir Jeremy Greenstock, the eloquent British diplomat
who took the U.S.-British case for war to the Security Council, may hold the
key to healing wounds the Iraq conflict created among the world powers.

As the newly appointed No. 2 coalition official in Iraq, Greenstock will
likely push for the kind of U.N. involvement the Bush administration had
earlier shunned but the rest of the Security Council is hoping for.

"If I have anything to do with it, the U.N. will be a central player in
those areas where it has genuine experience and expertise to offer,"
Greenstock told U.N. reporters at a farewell gathering Friday. He even
envisioned a return of international weapons inspectors.

After five years as Britain's ambassador to the United Nations, Greenstock
will leave the post next week to become a deputy to L. Paul Bremer, the U.S.
occupation governor in Iraq.

The No. 2 post is currently held by John Sawers, a former British ambassador
to Egypt.

Greenstock, a fluent Arabic speaker who held several posts in the Middle
East, is one of the most well-respected and well-liked diplomats on the
Security Council.

During seven months of intense negotiations leading up to the Iraq war,
Greenstock became the public face of British diplomacy, often appearing on
U.S. television news programs to articulate the U.S.-British case against
Saddam Hussein.

Behind the scenes, he worked tirelessly but ultimately failed to win U.N.
support for the war. Aides and colleagues, who describe him as a firm
believer in the United Nations, said he took the loss hard.

But Greenstock said there is still plenty of room for the United Nations and
others to play a role in post-war Iraq.

He confirmed Washington was floating the idea of a U.N.-authorized
international peacekeeping force to help out coalition troops. But he said
it wouldn't be a strictly U.N. operation and that many countries were
reluctant to work under the occupying authority of the United States and
Britain.

"I think there needs to be probably some development in Iraqis taking over
their own affairs before the situation changes. But the fact is that I don't
have instructions on this which I think is a signal something immediate
isn't going to happen."

Greenstock also said Britain would like to see international inspectors
return to Iraq. Many at the United Nations believe his appointment could
make that happen. The United States cut off U.N. inspectors from the weapons
hunt, which it has led so far without result.

Greenstock said his No. 1 priority will be to speed up the establishment of
a transitional Iraqi authority that can take over responsibilities from
Bremer's office, known as the Coalition Provisional Authority.

The CPA has come under intense criticism for moving too slowly on
reconstruction and establishing security around the capital.

"I'm not claiming that I will make any particular difference in mending the
problems they are already facing. But Ambassador Bremer has set it out in
very clear and good terms that he wants Iraq returned to Iraqis as soon as
possible.

"I think we'll be moving into a period quite soon when the CPA should spell
out what the timetable is and I think that's the intention in Washington and
London," Greenstock said.

The Oxford-educated diplomat is considered an intellectual by his peers.
During the negotiations, he and the former French ambassador, Jean-David
Levitte ‹ a close personal friend ‹ e-mailed each other poems reflective of
the complexities of the moment and their struggle for compromise in the face
of recalcitrance.

Levitte was transferred to Washington two months into the Iraq negotiations,
and aides to Greenstock said the British ambassador often missed having a
friend in the room, even when they were on opposite sides.

Greenstock served in Washington twice ‹ once in 1974 and again 20 years
later ‹ and represented Britain from posts in Saudi Arabia, France and
Dubai. He has three grown children and will be joined by his wife, Anne
Ashford Hodges, when he goes to Baghdad in the fall.


http://observer.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,6903,1001722,00.html

*  DON'T SELL OUT TO UNCLE SAM
by Will Hutton
The Observer , 20th July

Imagine the media reaction if Mr Blair had flown to Brussels and pressed for
relaxation of German and French rules on technology transfer to allow our
largest defence contractor, BAE Systems, a better chance of being taken over
by one of its leading companies. Imagine, too, that some weeks earlier, to
give added spice, his Defence Secretary had said that he wanted to reform
the command structures in the British armed forces so they slotted better
into the command structures of the fledgling European rapid reaction force.

There would have been bedlam. You can see the front pages of the tabloids
and the editorials in the Right-of-centre broadsheets. Yet, as Mr Blair did
just this in Washington, running up the white flag over any attempt to
sustain a defence infrastructure independent from the US and making a
mockery of possible plans for Britain to participate in European collective
security arrangements, there has scarcely been a peep.

The lack of debate, however, does not correspond to the importance of the
moment. We are to become a satrapy of the Pentagon, with all that implies.
BAE's industrial dilemma as Britain's largest manufacturer and biggest
defence contractor employing 100,000 people - how to control the widening
gap between the US defence industry and Europe's as the Americans
dramatically tighten their willingness to allow any form of technological
transfer - is forcing an answer to the strategic question of whether Britain
defines itself as European or American.

Until now, successive Prime Ministers have been able to avoid the choice.
They have had access to high-level American technology such as the Trident
and the Tomahawk missile systems as well as collaborating on European
defence projects such as the Eurofighter. The US indulged us, regarding the
risks of technological leakage as minimal; BAE could, thus, be a big player
on both sides of the Atlantic. Not any more.

The Bush administration was determined on the unilateralist militarisation
of American foreign policy even before 11 September and, intent on widening
US defence leadership, clamped down on even the slightest risk of its
technological leadership being accessed by others, even the loyal British.

Thus, when BAE became a subcontractor to build the new American jet-fighter,
the F-35, with Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman in 2001, the Government
had to accept that it would not have automatic access to the key codes
allowing us to adjust the plane's weapons systems to changing future
threats. We are to put £2 billion up to share the development costs of the
aircraft, but can only adapt its use if the US agrees.

The rules on the Trident and Tomahawk were tough, but the rules on the F-35
are even tougher. The Pentagon and the conservatives on the key
Congressional committees want to go further. BAE faces the prospect of
getting work from the Americans that cast it as a technological pygmy.
Unless it can become a trusted contractor in its own right to the Pentagon,
it believes it might as well throw in the towel. European defence spending
is growing at a fraction of the rate from a lower base. If BAE wants to
secure its future, it believes it must merge with one of the American
companies, as Mike Turner, BAE's chief executive, openly argues and, he
hopes, as an equal partner.

Fat chance. Boeing, touted as the most likely partner and with whom BAE has
had talks about talks, is four times its size. It would be swallowed up
whole. BAE's investment, research and employment policies would be dictated
from Boeing's new HQ in Chicago, but only after close consultation with the
Pentagon. Contracts and development work from Europe would dry up. Britain's
armed forces would operate largely with American kit. And, as Geoff Hoon has
signalled, their command structures would be adapted to permit American
battlefield direction and control.

The argument is that as America's and Britain's foreign and security
ambitions are identical, and that as there is little prospect of being in
any significant conflict where the Americans are not fighting as well, we
should have compatible military equipment and command structures. We should
simply ride the technological coat-tails of the US, accept its draconian
rules for technological transfer and cede 100,000 British jobs and defence
capability to whichever American company is prepared to buy BAE. Doubtless,
if the terms are right, members of the BAE board will make a small fortune
through their share options. Blair, Hoon and Straw are signed up to the
cause.

This, I think, is the gravest betrayal of our national interest. The
argument turns on two false premises. British and American interests are not
always and everywhere identical, as should be obvious after Iraq, where we
are committed to a long-term, expensive and potentially murderous engagement
for precious little gain and without UN support.

The object of American foreign and defence policy is to sustain US hegemony.
The object of British foreign policy is to sustain multilateralism and the
rule of international law; where we don't, we risk another Iraq.

As a result, we are highly likely to want to commit to military
interventions to enforce either UN or EU will, and to have to do so without
the US or, even occasionally, in the teeth of its hostility. To wreck our
capacity to act in this way because our weapon systems are all masterminded
by US codes and built by US contractors is the height of folly.

It is also a kick in the teeth for any hopes of developing a distinctive EU
defence and security capacity of which Britain is part - and with whose
interests Britain is more closely aligned. The EU needs to develop the
military capacity to intervene in today's short wars and the difficult job
of peacekeeping, a very different and complementary capacity to the US.

The air, naval and ground requirements are distinctive and need to be
supported by an appropriately customised defence manufacturing
infrastructure. To become part of the US defence complex serving very
different needs is lunacy, even if it enriches BAE directors and gives a
short-term fix to redressing the company's technological weakness.

You would have thought that pro-European Mr Blair would see these arguments
- and first term Blair certainly did. Half-way through his second term, he
seems to have lost his bearings. Curiously, entering the euro is more
reversible than abandoning our capacity for autonomous military action to
deliver our security and our interests. We may want access to American
technology, but let's not sacrifice our integrity as a country to gain it.


http://www.iht.com/articles/103636.html

*  IRAQI POLICY ARCHITECT GAINS VINDICATION
by Eric Schmitt
International Herald Tribune, from New York Times, 22nd July

MOSUL, Iraq: The long personal journey for Paul Wolfowitz on Iraq spread out
before him Monday in a modest second-floor conference room in this bustling
northern city. There sat the newly elected mayor and his council - Arabs,
Kurds, Christians and Turkomen - the very multiethnic and interfaith mix
that Wolfowitz has long argued can overcome their differences and thrive in
a free, democratic Iraq if Saddam Hussein were ousted.

Now it has happened, and Wolfowitz, the deputy defense secretary and a main
intellectual architect of Iraq policy for the administration of President
George W. Bush, expressed elation at the spectacle and a cautionary note to
his new allies in what he said was a running war on terror.

"You don't build a democracy like you build a house," Wolfowitz said over a
spread of tea, honey pastries and water buffalo cheese. "Democracy grows
like a garden. If you keep the weeds out and water the plants and you're
patient, eventually you get something magnificent." For Wolfowitz,
crisscrossing Iraq over the past five days on a fact-finding trip to gauge
the road ahead for America's strategy produced soaring emotions and a sense
of final vindication. Since 1979 he has issued a steady drumbeat of warnings
about the menace posed by Saddam and his Ba'ath Party followers, long before
anyone feared Iraq's suspected chemical and biological weapons arsenal.

Wolfowitz was greeted as a liberator by two groups who suffered the most
under Saddam's three-decade rule - Kurds here in the north and Shiites in
the south, especially marshland Arabs - and listened to their horrific tales
of loved ones tortured or killed by Saddam henchmen. He has also been a
magnet for complaints that the all-powerful United States had failed to
provide more security, more electricity and more jobs.

"Even though there are many things we can do, we are not gods, and the
things we can do take time," Wolfowitz told the leaders here. "It's
important for you and your colleagues to teach patience."

Clearly, Iraq is still a very dangerous place. Wolfowitz traveled in a
heavily armed ground convoy, often with attack helicopters buzzing overhead.
His C-130 transport plane detected enemy ground radar on a flight Monday to
Kirkuk, and it discharged flares as a defensive measure. The crew said it
saw no missiles. Immense challenges lie ahead. Thieves in Basra are tapping
into pipelines and smuggling oil into nearby Iran. The slightest rumor of
fuel shortages triggers huge lines at gas stations, requiring army soldiers
to stand guard. In Baghdad and Mosul, Iraqis who work for the coalition have
received death threats. Foreign fighters and terrorists continue to
infiltrate Iraq's porous borders and ambush American troops. The United
States is scrambling to set up a new Iraqi civil defense force to free
thousands of American troops to conduct anti-guerrilla missions and to put
more of an Iraqi face on the postwar security effort. Despite the huge
challenges ahead, Wolfowitz found an ebullient note here as he wrapped up
his trip. "I feel very encouraged over all that conditions here are much
better than I thought they were before I came," Wolfowitz said at a news
conference of Kurdish journalists. "The biggest challenge we face
immediately is a very serious security challenge. But I believe it's just a
very small minority of Iraqis and some foreigners who are doing that." From
Basra to Baghdad and points north, Wolfowitz's message became clear over
time and will likely influence the priorities and decisions ahead for the
Pentagon and the administration on Iraq. "You can't deal with the complex
situation of Iraq in simply a one-dimensional way," he said. "The problem of
security is related to the problem of electricity. They're both related to
the problem of employment. And the question of governance affects
everything. We need a strategy that moves forward on all those things." And
indeed there is progress. Here in the north, the 101st Airborne Division has
helped establish interim city and provincial governments, restore commerce
along the Syrian and Turkish borders, repair schools, bridges and
courthouses and broker a major harvest agreement with local farmers. In the
holy cities of An Najaf and Karbala in south-central Iraq, American marines
have worked closely with tribal and religious leaders. Yet much of
Wolfowitz's trip has the feel of being stage-managed to support his
long-stated views. Reporters joined him on a tour of a mass graveyard in
Hilla, where 3,000 bodies were unearthed from shallow pits. He led another
tour through the notorious Abu Ghraib prison outside Baghdad, where
thousands of Iraqis were tortured and executed. But not once during the
entire trip did Wolfowitz speak to any expert about the hunt for Iraq's
weapons of mass destruction. That despite the fact that Iraq's illicit
weapons were the principal reason that Bush decided to wage war to topple
Saddam's government, and despite the fact that some 1,500 military and
civilian specialists, headed by a two-star U.S. Army general, recently
arrived to take up the search. Aides to Wolfowitz said that mission now
belonged to American intelligence agencies. Wolfowitz took notes throughout
his trip and threw out questions to everyone.

He said the barrage of information and impressions over the past five days
had felt like drinking out of "two or three fire hoses" at once, and many
questions remain.

None, perhaps, are as pointed as the fate of Saddam. Military commanders say
he is still alive and almost surely in Iraq, and Wolfowitz said he would
eventually be captured or killed.

He acknowledged that this was crucial for ending the fear in which Saddam
still grips many Iraqis. At a city council meeting in An Najaf, one
councilman asked if the United States was secretly holding Saddam to ensure
that Iraqis do what the coalition wants. It triggered a rare flash of anger
from Wolfowitz. "We're not playing any games with Saddam Hussein," he said.


THE PHILOSOPHY OF WAR

http://politics.guardian.co.uk/labour/story/0,9061,1000564,00.html

*  TONY BLAIR'S SPEECH TO THE US CONGRESS
Guardian, 18th July

Thank you. Mr Speaker and Mr Vice-President, honorable members of Congress,
I'm deeply touched by that warm and generous welcome. That's more than I
deserve and more than I'm used to, quite frankly.

And let me begin by thanking you most sincerely for voting to award me the
Congressional Gold Medal. But you, like me, know who the real heroes are:
those brave service men and women, yours and ours, who fought the war and
risk their lives still. And our tribute to them should be measured in this
way, by showing them and their families that they did not strive or die in
vain, but that through their sacrifice future generations can live in
greater peace, prosperity and hope.

Let me also express my gratitude to President Bush. Through the troubled
times since September the 11th changed our world, we have been allies and
friends. Thank you, Mr President, for your leadership.

Mr Speaker, sir, my thrill on receiving this award was only a little
diminished on being told that the first Congressional Gold Medal was awarded
to George Washington for what Congress called his 'wise and spirited
conduct' in getting rid of the British out of Boston. On our way down here,
Senator Frist was kind enough to show me the fireplace where, in 1814, the
British had burnt the Congress Library. I know this is kind of late, but
sorry.

Actually, you know, my middle son was studying 18th century history and the
American War of Independence, and he said to me the other day, 'You know
Lord North Dad? He was the British prime minister who lost us America. So
just think, however many mistakes you'll make, you'll never make one that
bad.'

Members of Congress, I feel a most urgent sense of mission about today's
world. September the 11th was not an isolated event, but a tragic prologue,
Iraq another act, and many further struggles will be set upon this stage
before it's over.

There never has been a time when the power of America was so necessary or so
misunderstood, or when, except in the most general sense, a study of history
provides so little instruction for our present day.

We were all reared on battles between great warriors, between great nations,
between powerful forces and ideologies that dominated entire continents. And
these were struggles for conquest, for land, or money, and the wars were
fought by massed armies. And the leaders were openly acknowledged, the
outcomes decisive.

Today, none of us expect our soldiers to fight a war on our own territory.
The immediate threat is not conflict between the world's most powerful
nations. And why? Because we all have too much to lose. Because technology,
communication, trade and travel are bringing us ever closer together.
Because in the last 50 years, countries like yours and mine have tripled
their growth and standard of living. Because even those powers like Russia
or China or India can see the horizon, the future wealth, clearly and know
they are on a steady road toward it. And because all nations that are free
value that freedom, will defend it absolutely, but have no wish to trample
on the freedom of others.

We are bound together as never before. And this coming together provides us
with unprecedented opportunity but also makes us uniquely vulnerable. And
the threat comes because in another part of our globe there is shadow and
darkness, where not all the world is free, where many millions suffer under
brutal dictatorship, where a third of our planet lives in a poverty beyond
anything even the poorest in our societies can imagine, and where a
fanatical strain of religious extremism has arisen, that is a mutation of
the true and peaceful faith of Islam.

And because in the combination of these afflictions a new and deadly virus
has emerged. The virus is terrorism whose intent to inflict destruction is
unconstrained by human feeling and whose capacity to inflict it is enlarged
by technology.

This is a battle that can't be fought or won only by armies. We are so much
more powerful in all conventional ways than the terrorists, yet even in all
our might, we are taught humility. In the end, it is not our power alone
that will defeat this evil. Our ultimate weapon is not our guns, but our
beliefs.

There is a myth that though we love freedom, others don't; that our
attachment to freedom is a product of our culture; that freedom, democracy,
human rights, the rule of law are American values, or Western values; that
Afghan women were content under the lash of the Taliban; that Saddam was
somehow beloved by his people; that Milosevic was Serbia's savior.

Members of Congress, ours are not Western values, they are the universal
values of the human spirit. And anywhere, any time ordinary people are given
the chance to choose, the choice is the same: freedom, not tyranny;
democracy, not dictatorship; the rule of law, not the rule of the secret
police.

The spread of freedom is the best security for the free. It is our last line
of defense and our first line of attack. And just as the terrorist seeks to
divide humanity in hate, so we have to unify it around an idea. And that
idea is liberty. We must find the strength to fight for this idea and the
compassion to make it universal. Abraham Lincoln said, 'Those that deny
freedom to others deserve it not for themselves.' And it is this sense of
justice that makes moral the love of liberty.

"In some cases where our security is under direct threat, we will have
recourse to arms. In others, it will be by force of reason. But in all
cases, to the same end: that the liberty we seek is not for some but for
all, for that is the only true path to victory in this struggle. But first
we must explain the danger.

Our new world rests on order. The danger is disorder. And in today's world,
it can now spread like contagion. The terrorists and the states that support
them don't have large armies or precision weapons; they don't need them.
Their weapon is chaos.

The purpose of terrorism is not the single act of wanton destruction. It is
the reaction it seeks to provoke: economic collapse, the backlash, the
hatred, the division, the elimination of tolerance, until societies cease to
reconcile their differences and become defined by them. Kashmir, the Middle
East, Chechnya, Indonesia, Africa - barely a continent or nation is
unscathed.

The risk is that terrorism and states developing weapons of mass destruction
come together. And when people say, 'That risk is fanciful,' I say we know
the Taliban supported al Qaeda. We know Iraq under Saddam gave haven to and
supported terrorists. We know there are states in the Middle East now
actively funding and helping people, who regard it as God's will in the act
of suicide to take as many innocent lives with them on their way to God's
judgment.

Some of these states are desperately trying to acquire nuclear weapons. We
know that companies and individuals with expertise sell it to the highest
bidder, and we know that at least one state, North Korea, lets its people
starve while spending billions of dollars on developing nuclear weapons and
exporting the technology abroad.

This isn't fantasy, it is 21st-century reality, and it confronts us now. Can
we be sure that terrorism and weapons of mass destruction will join
together? Let us say one thing: If we are wrong, we will have destroyed a
threat that at its least is responsible for inhuman carnage and suffering.
That is something I am confident history will forgive.

But if our critics are wrong, if we are right, as I believe with every fiber
of instinct and conviction I have that we are, and we do not act, then we
will have hesitated in the face of this menace when we should have given
leadership. That is something history will not forgive.

But precisely because the threat is new, it isn't obvious. It turns
upside-down our concepts of how we should act and when, and it crosses the
frontiers of many nations. So just as it redefines our notions of security,
so it must refine our notions of diplomacy.

There is no more dangerous theory in international politics than that we
need to balance the power of America with other competitive powers;
different poles around which nations gather.

Such a theory may have made sense in 19th-century Europe. It was perforce
the position in the Cold War. Today, it is an anachronism to be discarded
like traditional theories of security. And it is dangerous because it is not
rivalry but partnership we need; a common will and a shared purpose in the
face of a common threat.

And I believe any alliance must start with America and Europe. If Europe and
America are together, the others will work with us. If we split, the rest
will play around, play us off and nothing but mischief will be the result of
it.

You may think after recent disagreements it can't be done, but the debate in
Europe is open. Iraq showed that when, never forget, many European nations
supported our action.

And it shows it still when those that didn't agreed Resolution 1483 in the
United Nations for Iraq's reconstruction. Today, German soldiers lead in
Afghanistan, French soldiers lead in the Congo where they stand between
peace and a return to genocide.

So we should not minimize the differences, but we should not let them
confound us either. You know, people ask me after the past months when,
let's say, things were a trifle strained in Europe, 'Why do you persist in
wanting Britain at the center of Europe?' And I say, 'Well, maybe if the UK
were a group of islands 20 miles off Manhattan, I might feel differently.
But actually, we're 20 miles off Calais and joined by a tunnel.'

We are part of Europe, and we want to be. But we also want to be part of
changing Europe. Europe has one potential for weakness. For reasons that are
obvious, we spent roughly a thousand years killing each other in large
numbers.

The political culture of Europe is inevitably rightly based on compromise.
Compromise is a fine thing except when based on an illusion. And I don't
believe you can compromise with this new form of terrorism.

But Europe has a strength. It is a formidable political achievement. Think
of the past and think of the unity today. Think of it preparing to reach out
even to Turkey - a nation of vastly different culture, tradition, religion -
and welcome it in. But my real point is this: now Europe is at the point of
transformation. Next year, 10 new countries will join. Romania and Bulgaria
will follow. Why will these new European members transform Europe? Because
their scars are recent, their memories strong, their relationship with
freedom still one of passion, not comfortable familiarity.

They believe in the trans-Atlantic alliance. They support economic reform.
They want a Europe of nations, not a super state. They are our allies and
they are yours. So don't give up on Europe. Work with it.

To be a serious partner, Europe must take on and defeat the anti-Americanism
that sometimes passes for its political discourse. And what America must do
is show that this is a partnership built on persuasion, not command. Then
the other great nations of our world and the small will gather around in one
place, not many. And our understanding of this threat will become theirs.
And the United Nations can then become what it should be: an instrument of
action as well as debate.

The Security Council should be reformed. We need a new international regime
on the nonproliferation of weapons of mass destruction. And we need to say
clearly to United Nations members: 'If you engage in the systematic and
gross abuse of human rights in defiance of the UN charter, you cannot expect
to enjoy the same privileges as those that conform to it.'

I agree. It is not the coalition that determines the mission, but the
mission the coalition. But let us start preferring a coalition and acting
alone if we have to, not the other way around. True, winning wars is not
easier that way, but winning the peace is.

And we have to win both. And you have an extraordinary record of doing so.
Who helped Japan renew, or Germany reconstruct, or Europe get back on its
feet after World War Two? America. So when we invade Afghanistan or Iraq,
our responsibility does not end with military victory. Finishing the
fighting is not finishing the job.

So if Afghanistan needs more troops from the international community to
police outside Kabul, our duty is to get them. Let us help them eradicate
their dependency on the poppy, the crop whose wicked residue turns up on the
streets of Britain as heroin to destroy young British lives, as much as
their harvest warps the lives of Afghans.

We promised Iraq democratic government. We will deliver it. We promised them
the chance to use their oil wealth to build prosperity for all their
citizens, not a corrupt elite, and we will do so. We will stay with these
people so in need of our help until the job is done.

And then reflect on this: how hollow would the charges of American
imperialism be when these failed countries are and are seen to be
transformed from states of terror to nations of prosperity, from governments
of dictatorship to examples of democracy, from sources of instability to
beacons of calm.

And how risible would be the claims that these were wars on Muslims if the
world could see these Muslim nations still Muslim, but with some hope for
the future, not shackled by brutal regimes whose principal victims were the
very Muslims they pretended to protect?

It would be the most richly observed advertisement for the values of freedom
we can imagine. When we removed the Taliban and Saddam Hussein, this was not
imperialism. For these oppressed people, it was their liberation. And why
can the terrorists even mount an argument in the Muslim world that it isn't?
Because there is one cause terrorism rides upon, a cause they have no belief
in but can manipulate.

I want to be very plain: this terrorism will not be defeated without peace
in the Middle East between Israel and Palestine. Here it is that the poison
is incubated. Here it is that the extremist is able to confuse in the mind
of a frighteningly large number of people the case for a Palestinian state
and the destruction of Israel, and to translate this moreover into a battle
between East and West, Muslim, Jew and Christian.

May this never compromise the security of the state of Israel. The state of
Israel should be recognized by the entire Arab world, and the vile
propaganda used to indoctrinate children, not just against Israel but
against Jews, must cease.

You cannot teach people hate and then ask them to practice peace. But
neither can you teach people peace except by according them dignity and
granting them hope. Innocent Israelis suffer. So do innocent Palestinians.

The ending of Saddam's regime in Iraq must be the starting point of a new
dispensation for the Middle East: Iraq, free and stable; Iran and Syria, who
give succor to the rejectionist men of violence, made to realize that the
world will no longer countenance it, that the hand of friendship can only be
offered them if they resile completely from this malice, but that if they
do, that hand will be there for them and their people; the whole of region
helped toward democracy. And to symbolize it all, the creation of an
independent, viable and democratic Palestinian state side by side with the
state of Israel.

What the president is doing in the Middle East is tough but right. And let
me at this point thank the president for his support, and that of President
Clinton before him, and the support of members of this Congress, for our
attempts to bring peace to Northern Ireland.

You know, one thing I've learned about peace processes: they're always
frustrating, they're often agonizing, and occasionally they seem hopeless.
But for all that, having a peace process is better than not having one.

And why has a resolution of Palestine such a powerful appeal across the
world? Because it embodies an even-handed approach to justice, just as when
this president recommended and this Congress supported a $15 billion
increase in spending on the world's poorest nations to combat HIV/AIDS. It
was a statement of concern that echoed rightly around the world.

There can be no freedom for Africa without justice and no justice without
declaring war on Africa's poverty, disease and famine with as much vehemence
as we removed the tyrant and the terrorists.

In Mexico in September, the world should unite and give us a trade round
that opens up our markets. I'm for free trade, and I'll tell you why:
because we can't say to the poorest people in the world, 'We want you to be
free, but just don't try to sell your goods in our market.'

And because ever since the world started to open up, it has prospered. And
that prosperity has to be environmentally sustainable, too. You know, I
remember at one of our earliest international meetings, a European prime
minister telling President Bush that the solution was quite simple: just
double the tax on American gasoline. Your president gave him a most eloquent
look.

It reminded me of the first leader of my party, Keir Hardie, in the early
part of the 20th century. He was a man who used to correspond with the
Pankhursts, the great campaigners for women's votes. And shortly before the
election, June 1913, one of the Pankhurst sisters wrote to Hardie saying she
had been studying Britain carefully and there was a worrying rise in sexual
immorality linked to heavy drinking. So she suggested he fight the election
on the platform of votes for women, chastity for men and prohibition for
all.

He replied saying, 'Thank you for your advice, yhe electoral benefits of
which are not immediately discernible.' We all get that kind of advice,
don't we?

But frankly, we need to go beyond even Kyoto, and science and technology is
the way. Climate change, deforestation, the voracious drain on natural
resources cannot be ignored. Unchecked, these forces will hinder the
economic development of the most vulnerable nations first and ultimately all
nations. So we must show the world that we are willing to step up to these
challenges around the world and in our own backyards.

Members of Congress, if this seems a long way from the threat of terror and
weapons of mass destruction, it is only to say again that the world security
cannot be protected without the world's heart being one. So America must
listen as well as lead. But, members of Congress, don't ever apologize for
your values.

Tell the world why you're proud of America. Tell them when the Star-Spangled
Banner starts, Americans get to their feet, Hispanics, Irish, Italians,
Central Europeans, East Europeans, Jews, Muslims, white, Asian, black, those
who go back to the early settlers and those whose English is the same as
some New York cab drivers I've dealt with, but whose sons and daughters
could run for this Congress.

Tell them why Americans, one and all, stand upright and respectful. Not
because some state official told them to, but because whatever race, color,
class or creed they are, being American means being free. That's why they're
proud.

As Britain knows, all predominant power seems for a time invincible, but, in
fact, it is transient. The question is: What do you leave behind? And what
you can bequeath to this anxious world is the light of liberty.

That is what this struggle against terrorist groups or states is about.
We're not fighting for domination. We're not fighting for an American world,
though we want a world in which America is at ease. We're not fighting for
Christianity, but against religious fanaticism of all kinds.

And this is not a war of civilizations, because each civilization has a
unique capacity to enrich the stock of human heritage. We are fighting for
the inalienable right of humankind - black or white, Christian or not, left,
right or a million different - to be free, free to raise a family in love
and hope, free to earn a living and be rewarded by your efforts, free not to
bend your knee to any man in fear, free to be you so long as being you does
not impair the freedom of others. That's what we're fighting for. And it's a
battle worth fighting.

And I know it's hard on America, and in some small corner of this vast
country, out in Nevada or Idaho or these places I've never been to, but
always wanted to go. I know out there there's a guy getting on with his
life, perfectly happily, minding his own business, saying to you, the
political leaders of this country, 'Why me? And why us? And why America?'

And the only answer is, 'Because destiny put you in this place in history,
in this moment in time, and the task is yours to do.'

And our job, my nation that watched you grow, that you fought alongside and
now fights alongside you, that takes enormous pride in our alliance and
great affection in our common bond, our job is to be there with you. You are
not going to be alone. We will be with you in this fight for liberty. We
will be with you in this fight for liberty. And if our spirit is right and
our courage firm, the world will be with us.

Thank You


http://observer.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,6903,1001642,00.html

*  AT WAR FOR FREEDOM
by James Woolsey
Observer, 20th July

America and the western world are at war with 'fascist' Middle East
governments and totalitarian Islamists. The freedoms we stand for are
loathed and our vulnerable systems under attack. Liberty and security will
be in conflict as we line up behind the new march of democracy.

This is about the war we are in, whom it is with, how we have to fight it
inside our own countries and how we have to fight it abroad. The war is,
essentially, similar to the Cold War. This is the origin of the phrase World
War IV, which Professor Eliot Cohen came up with in America shortly after
September 11 2001, to characterise the parallels between this war and what
he called World War III - the Cold War.

Those parallels are: that it will last a very long time - decades; that it
will sporadically involve the use of military force, as did the Cold War in
Korea for example; but that an important component would be ideological. I
would add that, just as we eventually won the Cold War - and when I say 'we'
here, I always mean Britain, the United States, the democracies, our allies
- it was in no small measure because, while containing the Soviet Union and
its allies militarily and with nuclear deterrence, we undermined their
ideology.

We undermined it over a long period by convincing the Lech Walesas, the
Vaclav Havels, the Andrei Sakharovs, the Solidarities, that this was not a
clash of civilisations, not even a clash of countries, but a war of freedom
against tyranny, and that we were on their side.

To exactly the same degree, we will surely be successful in this long war if
we convince the hundreds of millions of reasonable and decent Muslims around
the world who do not want to be terrorists, who do not want to live in
dictatorships, that we are on their side and they on ours.

There are really three movements in the Middle East that are essentially at
war with the west, with modernity, with western Europe and the United States
and our allies. They are, first of all, the fascists, a term that I use
advisedly because the Arab nationalist movements of Syria - until recently
Iraq and Syria - and Libya and other such groups in the Middle East are
effectively modelled on the fascist parties of the 1920s and 1930s. They are
structured like them, and are similarly anti-semitic. They are fascists and
there is no reason to mince words.

The other two movements are both Islamist, and I use that term to denote
precisely totalitarian movements masquerading as portions of a religion. The
mullahs in Tehran, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and those with him, and Al Qaeda
and its supporters - one on the Shi'a side of the Islamic divide and the
other on the Sunni side - are effectively totalitarian movements disguised
as religions, in much the same way that Tomás Torquemada and the Dominicans
around him who operated the Spanish Inquisition were a totalitarian movement
in the guise of a portion of Christianity.

The Islamists on the Shi'a side of the divide, in Tehran, are massively
unpopular in their own country. Even according to their official public
opinion polls, a substantial majority of Iranians would like to have
dealings with the US and, whenever given an opportunity to vote, have
supported reformist candidates and President Mohammad Khatami.

>From around 1996 to 1998 a number of us were optimistic about the
possibility of internal reform in Iran as part of governmental procedures.
However, beginning in 1998-1999, the murder of dissidents, and the
imprisonment of newspaper editors and the rest, pushed the situation to one
in which - though occasionally American spokesmen and those elsewhere call
it a democracy - it is a democracy in exactly the same sense that the old
Soviet Union was. Iran has a constitution, political parties, and elections;
they just do not mean anything.

The struggle that is now going on is one in which the mullahs have lost the
support of the students - and half of the country is aged nineteen and
younger; the women; the reformers; the brave newspaper editors being
tortured in prison; and, increasingly and importantly, their own clergy.

Ayatollah after ayatollah is turning against the mullahs who control the
instruments of power; not only brave Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri, who
has been opposed to them for years, but also conservatives, such as
Ayatollah Jalaluddin Taheri, the prayer leader in Isfahan, who denounced
them last year as un-Islamic for sponsoring terror, torture and the rest.
And of course, he is absolutely right.

The third movement, the Islamists from the Sunni side of the divide - Al
Qaeda and those who support them, fund them and provide their ideological
fervour, which involves many who are encouraged by the Wahhabi religious
conservatives in Saudi Arabia - is likely to be the longest lasting. In his
new book, The Shield of Achilles, Philip Bobbit calls Al Qaeda a virtual
state, and there is a good argument to that effect. It is a virtual state
chiefly because of its access to resources. As long as it receives economic
assistance from prosperous Saudis, from the wealth of the Gulf, and its
intellectual sustenance from the Wahhabi sect, it will be with us for a long
time.

If you put these three movements together, particularly the latter, it is
difficult to avoid the conclusion that we will be in this war for many
years, quite probably for decades. Eliot Cohen's original characterisation
of this as World War IV - in the sense that it has certain parallels to the
four and a half decade-long Cold War - is fair and accurate.

If that is whom we are at war with, why? There are two reasons, an
underlying one and a temporal one. The underlying one was best stated to me
a little over a year ago by a taxi driver in the District of Columbia. I
absolutely hate reading articles about public opinion polls, which I find
intensely boring and a waste of time. Instead, since I spend a lot of time
in taxis, I talk to the drivers, which in America at least I find a much
better finger on the pulse of the country than opinion polls.

I was in a taxi a year ago last February, the day after former President
Bill Clinton gave a speech in Washington in which he said that September 11
was a payback in part for American slavery and the treatment of the American
Indian. I saw right away that the newspaper on the front seat was open at
that article and that the driver was one of my favourite substitutes for
polls - a black citizen of the District, wearing his Redskins cap, a guy of
about my age, who had probably been driving a cab for a long time.

So I asked him what he thought about Clinton's speech. He said: 'Those
people don't hate us for what we've done wrong; they hate us for what we do
right.' I would submit that is the essence of the matter.

We and you are cordially loathed for freedom of speech, freedom of religion,
freedom of the press, open economies, equal - or almost equal - treatment of
women, and so on. It is not what we have done wrong that is creating the
problem; it is what we do right.

If that is true, then this is not a war that will end with an Al Qaeda
Gorbachev; it will not end with an arms control agreement. It is a war to
the death, like the war with the Nazis, and we should understand that it
will have to be fought that way.

The other side of this is why, temporally? Why did they choose to do this
now? I cannot speak for Britain or other countries but in the case of
America, for something like a quarter of a century, for all practical
purposes we hung a 'kick me' sign on our backs in the Middle East.

First, we convinced many people there that we did not give a damn about the
people in the region and that we cared principally about its oil; that it
was a filling station for our large sport utility vehicles. Secondly, we
convinced them that we were a wealthy, feckless country that would not
fight.

Starting in 1979, when our hostages were seized in Tehran, we tied yellow
ribbons around trees. In 1982-1983, our embassy and marine barracks were
blown up in Beirut and we left. Throughout the rest of the eighties, there
were various terrorist attacks against us, mainly sponsored by Iran, and we
prosecuted a few terrorists here and there - we sent the lawyers, basically
- and we would occasionally lob in a bomb or a cruise missile from afar.

In 1991 in the course of the Gulf war, we encouraged the Kurds and the Shi'a
to rebel against President Saddam Hussein, then we signed a ceasefire
agreement which left the Republican Guard and their armed helicopters
intact, and the bridges intact. We stood back and watched the Republican
Guard massacre the Kurds and Shi'a whom we had encouraged, thereby
convincing all and sundry that once the Americans and their allies had
secured the oil of Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, they did not give a damn about
the people of the Middle East.

In 1993, Saddam tried to assassinate former President George Bush in Kuwait.
The best response that Clinton could come up with was to launch two dozen
cruise missiles into an empty Iraqi intelligence headquarters in the middle
of the night, thereby presumably responding effectively to Iraqi cleaning
women and nightwatchmen, but not particularly effectively to Saddam.

In 1993, our helicopters were shot down in Mogadishu, our rangers were
killed and again, as a decade earlier in Beirut, we left. Throughout the
rest of the nineties, with the USS Cole and East Africa embassy bombings and
the like, again we prosecuted a few terrorists and occasionally launched a
cruise missile or a bomb at a tank or a surface-to-air missile site.

No doubt if you were in al-Qaeda, in Iraqi intelligence, or one of
Khamenei's advisers assessing things at the end of the twentieth century,
you would have had to say that the Americans - from this wealthy, feckless,
spoiled country - would not fight. You would have had some evidence for
that. Now, just as that was the assessment of us by the Japanese at the
beginning of the 1940s, and just as they were somewhat surprised after Pearl
Harbour, after September 11 both the Taliban and al-Qaeda, and now the
Ba'athists in Iraq, are somewhat surprised. However, there is still a long
way to go.

If that is who is at war with us and why, what do we need to do about it,
both inside our own countries and in the Middle East? Inside the US, during
the Cold War and the decade of the 1990s after it, we became very used to
the proposition that liberty and security do not conflict, that we do not
need to worry about that. Liberty we had plenty of, or as much as almost any
reasonable, modern society could, and security was something that the navy,
the Central Intelligence Agency and so on dealt with overseas. September 11
rather changed that.

The US at least has to understand that for a number of years we will have to
face conflicts between liberty and security that did not occur before. We
really did have people who were legally in the United States training in
aircraft simulators to work out how to kill thousands of Americans. There
really were terrorist cells in places like Lackawanna, Pennsylvania.

So we are going to do things that are effective against terrorism, and which
may involve steps like special scrutiny of Wahhabi-backed charities, for
example, that would not have happened prior to September 11. We also have to
realise who we are. We are not a race or a culture or a language. We are
creatures of fourth US President James Madison's Constitution and his Bill
of Rights. We can never forget that.

These two conflicting concerns - security and liberty - are going to be with
us for a long time. They will conflict in ways they did not appear to before
September 11. We have to choose wisely and remember both. We cannot forget
the need to be effective, not just politically correct, in the way we deal
with the real threats to us. We also cannot forget the Bill of Rights.

In addition - and this is what I spend most of my day job working on - we
have to start looking at all the networks that serve our modern society so
effectively: electricity grids, oil and gas pipelines, the Internet, food
production and delivery, and so on. We have to realise that in the
post-September 11 world, these networks have been put together - in Britain,
Japan, Australia, the United States - by very bright and able people,
business people, sometimes government regulators, engineers. They are
constructed to be responsive to the public, to be open, easily accessed,
easily maintained, fully utilised to spread overheads, and the like. All
these characteristics are quite reasonable in the context of peace.

In the context of war on one's own soil, however, things look very
different. Take 'just in time' delivery: many American factories have
components for four or five days' work, which is fine in most circumstances.
It means you do not have to maintain big inventories. You can change model
characteristics quickly, whether manufacturing computers, cars or whatever.
It saves costs.

It is an excellent idea, until someone puts a dirty bomb - say caesium or
strontium packed around high explosives - inside a container shipped in from
somewhere in South Asia, for instance. With a simple detonator it goes off
in an American city and makes a large portion of that city effectively
uninhabitable for a long time, because of the increased risk of cancer. This
would not be a nuclear explosion but one that spreads radioactive material.

Then the fifty thousand containers a day that cross American borders will
start having to be inspected. We now inspect two per cent. If we inspect
them all, it will not be long before those four or five days' worth of
components in factories are no longer there and they will have to begin
shutting down.

The whole set of networks that we have constructed has the functional
equivalent of flimsy cockpit doors. The flimsy doors made it possible for
aeroplanes to be taken over and turned into giant cruise missiles to be
flown into buildings killing thousands of Americans, rather than 'merely'
blown up or crashed causing the death of the people on board.

Because of the doors, thousands more could be killed. There was a network
vulnerability that could be exploited to turn a portion of it into a weapon.
With respect to our electricity grids, oil and gas pipelines, food
production and delivery, there are many such weak points that we need to
work together to fix.

My most controversial point may be about what needs to be done to fight this
war in the Middle East. We will have great difficulty bringing peace to the
region without changing the nature of governments there - without bringing
democracy.

If one starts out from the proposition that this is a task for America,
Britain or others to accomplish principally with military forces, we will
fail. We have to take a much longer view, and, for example, pay attention to
the brave newspaper editors - such as one in Saudi Arabia who recently took
on the religious police and got himself fired by the Interior Minister
Prince Naif bin Abdul Aziz. There are similar brave reformers in Egypt and
other countries who are effectively the green shoots springing up through
the pavement, indicative of a growing approach, a growing openness in much
of the Muslim world to democracy and liberty.

Some people seem to think that this is a hopeless task. Two points: first,
the substantial majority of the world's Muslims live in democracies -
Indonesia, Bangladesh, India, Turkey, Mali, the Balkans. They may not be
perfect democracies but they are democracies nonetheless. I am the Chairman
of Freedom House, the oldest human rights organisation in America. Freedom
House says that there are a hundred and twenty one democracies, eighty nine
of them free - that is, they have parliamentary elections plus the rule of
law. Another thirty two are partly free, like Russia or Indonesia, say, with
substantial difficulties with respect to the rule of law, but nonetheless
regular elections.

In the eighty-nine years since the guns of August 1914, the world has gone
from ten or twelve democracies to over a hundred and twenty, and those ten
or twelve in 1914 were democracies only for the male portion of the
populations. Nothing like that has happened within a single lifetime in
world history before. Anyone eighty nine years old has seen democracies
multiply tenfold.

Most of those came about not through military force, but in all sorts of
ways. During and after the Cold War, for example, in Iberia, the role of the
German Social Democrats was important in working with their socialist
colleagues to steer Spain and Portugal away from communism and
totalitarianism and towards democracy. In the Philippines, it was people
power. In Mongolia, Mali and countries all over the world, democracy has
become a way of life.

These are places where, year after year, the smart, self-appointed experts
have said, 'X will never be a democracy'. They said that the Germans would
never be able to run a democracy, the Japanese would not, Catholic countries
would not - because in the 1970s, Iberia and Latin America were
non-democratic. They said it about people from a Chinese cultural
background, yet the Taiwanese seem to have figured it out; maybe China will
too. They said it about the Russians; after all, they missed the
Renaissance, the Reformation and the Enlightenment - how could they run a
democracy? But they seem to be getting started.

All along, the smart money has been wrong on this subject. It is not that
there are no retrograde steps. There are in Venezuela and elsewhere, and in
the Arab world, a portion of the Muslim world, there are some two
hundred-plus million Arabs who live without democracy. This is an area where
the transition will be difficult for a series of historical, cultural and
religious reasons, many to do with the influence of the Wahhabis.

Nonetheless, it is not hopeless. It is the best path to peace, since
democracies do not fight one another. They fight dictatorships and
dictatorships fight each other, and democracies sometimes preempt against
dictatorships, but they do not fight one another.

If we want to be successful in this long war, we will have to take on this
issue of democracy in the Arab world. We will have to take on the - and I
would use the word 'racist' - view that Arabs cannot operate democracies. We
will need to make some people uncomfortable.

As we undertake these efforts in the Middle East and elsewhere, occasionally
by force of arms but generally not, generally by influence, by standing up
for brave students in the streets of Tehran, we will hear people say, from
President Hosni Mubarak's regime in Egypt or from the Saudi royal family,
that we are making them very nervous. And our response should be, 'Good. We
want you nervous. We want you to change, but realise that now, for the
fourth time in a hundred years, the democracies are on the march. And we are
on the side of those whom you most fear: your own people.'

James Woolsey is former Director of Central Intelligence. This is an edited
version of his address to the Political Risk conference at Chatham House
last month.

About The World Today essay

This article is published in the August/September 2003 issue of The World
Today, published by the Royal Institute of International Affairs at Chatham
House. An essay from The World Today is published online in Observer
Worldview each month. Previous World Today Essays
can be read here.

The World Today provides expert analysis on current international issues.
For more information and an online sample issue of The World Today, please
go to www.riia.org. Please contact Michelle Mannion at mmannion@riia.org if
you would like more information.

About Observer Worldview

Observer Worldview contains a selection of the best of The Observer's
international commentary and reporting, including exclusive online comment
and analysis each week. The online pieces are also trailed in the newspaper.
Email observer@guardianunlimited.co.uk with comments on articles or ideas
for future pieces.




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